When I was growing up, Saturday night was "bath night". Each of us kids would take turns getting washed and scrubbed and cleaner than seemed possible to a small child who liked mud puddles and digging in the dirt looking for bits of "archaeology".
Then we would all sit together in the living room with towels draped around our pajama-clad shoulders with wet hair squeaky clean and dripping, watching television till bedtime. --It's funny, but even now when I hear the theme song from a certain show which had a very long running on Saturday night tv, I can almost smell wet hair and cheap apple-scented shampoo.
At the time, my parents would tell us that we were getting all cleaned up for Sunday, because we should always try to look our best for God when we go to church. For this reason, we also had special clothes only for Sunday (or for very special occasions). This hearkened back to the idea of the "Sunday Best".
In the days of the pioneers, it would be very common only to have two sets of clothes: one for everyday wear and one for "best". A woman would very likely only have one nice dress which was her Sunday dress, but also her wedding dress, party dress, and often would be the dress she was buried in when she died.
The point was, church was an occasion worthy of one's "best". And if you were wearing that treasured "best" article of clothing, you sure wanted to be clean when you put it on! (Especially if you happened to be the one in charge of doing the washing each week.) --Hence the Saturday night bath tradition.
Actually, these two traditions go back much further than the pioneer days, and may quite possibly have their roots in the book of Exodus.
When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, He led them to a mountain called Mt. Sinai, and had Moses give the people special instructions for when He would appear and speak publicly to Moses:
"And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day: for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai." (Exodus 10-11)
Did you catch that? God wanted them to wash their clothes in preparation to stand before the presence of God. Additionally, a quick survey of the passages on worship in the tabernacle and temple will show that washing played a major part. In fact, the priests could not go into the tabernacle (and later, the temple) until they had first washed. And when the high priest put on his priestly garments, he was required first to wash. --Did you notice? Washing and special clothing had a part in God's ordained mode of worship.
Now, we no longer worship at either temple or tabernacle, but we ourselves are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and are instructed to treat our bodies as such (2 Cor. 6:16-19). And what Christ said about ritual washing of the outward brings a helpful explanation of the symbolism behind the practice, as well as some insight to what it means for us today:
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also." (Matthew 23:25-26)
The point is not the cleansing of the outside, but the cleansing of the inside. It is important that we prepare to meet God by getting right with Him, confessing sin and resetting our focus on Him. Without this, our worship is just like setting a clean cup with muddy water in it before a guest. God desires us to be clean on the inside when we worship Him.
Notice also the command Jesus gave the Pharisees: clean up the inside so that the outside will be clean. When we are right on the inside, our outsides should show it. That's the whole point of washing up and looking our best on Sundays --to show that we are dedicated to worshiping God with clean, holy hearts, dressed first in Christ's righteousness, but showing with our attire that He is worthy of our very best in every area of life --even down to what we wear.
So next time you wash up and don your Sunday best, remember what it represents! Getting ready for church should not be merely an external exercise, but a preparation of the whole being: spiritual, mental, and physical, to meet with the God who is worthy of our best!
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